Wiki

Wiki is a very handy tool and could be used in many situations. As I am right into water polo coaching on the Sunshine Coast I created a wiki called Water Polo Coaching. My idea was to create this so any of the coaches on the coast could use this as a means to post a thread with any questions for example, 'How do you teach egg beater?' Then the other coaches could go on and suggest some ideas on how to coach it. Using the wiki as a collaborative tool to share and help each other out and share our good coaching ideas. First the other coaches would need to learn how to use it wiki.

Similarly this tool can be used in the classroom in so many ways. When the class is learning a certain subject, e.g. Under the Sea, the teacher could start a wiki with this title. The students could use the wiki to ask any questions they have and either their peers or the teacher could answer it. It could be used to gather information about a topic with all the students encouraged to research the topic and add new information they have learnt on the wiki.

In the classroom if the students are doing a group assignment they could be encouraged to use a wiki for collaboration because if they find information they could post it to their wiki for their group members to see. Augar, N, Raitman, R and Zhou, W,. (2004) from the School of Information Technology Deakin University states "Wikis are fully editable websites; any user can read or add content to a wiki site. This functionality means that wikis are an excellent tool for collaboration in an online environment". Their paper presents "wikis as a useful tool for facilitating online education and believe wikies are a valuable technology for teaching and learning online" (Augar, N, Raitman, R and Zhou, W,. 2004).

Augar, N., Raitman, R. & Zhou, W. (2004). Teaching and learning online with wikis. In R. Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer & R. Phillips (Eds), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE Conference (pp. 95-104). Perth, 5-8 December. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/augar.html